Papers by Chris Dingwall-Jones
Transgender Theology Blog, 2023
“What is a woman?”
Now the title of a supremely incurious documentary by conservative American c... more “What is a woman?”
Now the title of a supremely incurious documentary by conservative American commentator Matt Walsh, this question is also a live one in British political discourse. Rather than an invitation to deeper discussion about the nature of gender, it aims to shut down political questions about trans rights by re-framing the discussion as a kind of competition around sex and gender difference.
This competition is focused on the crudely biological, so that more than one journalist has asked Kier Starmer why he ‘struggles with the penis question’ – a demeaning and dehumanising way to talk about the actual trans people affected by policy decisions, but no less predictable for all that.
However, ‘what is a woman’ is also a deeply theological question. I don’t just mean that, taken seriously, it raises all sorts of important theological questions, although it does. Rather, is a question which has been debated by Christian theologians for almost as long as there have been Christian theologians, and their discussions have not necessarily followed the routes you might expect.
Practical Theology, 2023
This soapbox article, which concentrates on liturgical (and especially Eucharistic) worship in my... more This soapbox article, which concentrates on liturgical (and especially Eucharistic) worship in my own context of English Anglicanism, has two main aims. First, to name antitheatrical prejudice as a limiting factor in our analysis of liturgy and worship. Second, to argue that we should pay attention to the resonances between theology and performance studies. I suggest that exploring these questions might refresh our reflections about what happens in worship. It will pay particular attention to the question of ‘participation’, as this has been an important area of debate in both liturgical and performance studies in recent years, and so forms a natural point of contact. The article begins with a brief overview of how participation has been understood in theatre and performance studies, including the value of participation as a concept and the problems of assuming that ‘participation’ is straightforwardly positive. Next, it more explicitly addresses how these understandings might apply to worship, acknowledging in the process some potential risks. It concludes by arguing that these risks are not simply necessary but unavoidable, and a chastening of our claims for participation might lead to a more honest assessment of both the opportunities and the limitations presented by participation in liturgy.
Performing Psychologies, 2019
This chapter responds to Anna Harpin's invitation to trace the cultural context of psychi... more This chapter responds to Anna Harpin's invitation to trace the cultural context of psychiatric space through their artistic representation by drawing attention to the particularly gendered articulation of certain cultural understandings of madness. It offers a reading of plays by Sarah Daniels and Sarah Kane, drawing attention to their divergent perspectives on the 'Care in the Community' programme of deinstitutionalization, and attending to the permeable nature of the spaces and concepts which shape our understanding of both gender and madness.
Performing Psychologies, 2019
This chapter responds to Anna Harpin's invitation to trace the cultural context of psychi... more This chapter responds to Anna Harpin's invitation to trace the cultural context of psychiatric space through their artistic representation by drawing attention to the particularly gendered articulation of certain cultural understandings of madness. It offers a reading of plays by Sarah Daniels and Sarah Kane, drawing attention to their divergent perspectives on the 'Care in the Community' programme of deinstitutionalization, and attending to the permeable nature of the spaces and concepts which shape our understanding of both gender and madness.
Studies in Theatre and Performance, 2017
Studies in Theatre and Performance, 2017
This article discusses two contrasting contemporary performance pieces which explore mental illne... more This article discusses two contrasting contemporary performance pieces which explore mental illness: Laura Jane Dean's Head Hand Head (2013), a solo autobiographical performance about Dean's experience of obsessive-compulsive disorder; and Theatre Témoin's The Fantasist (2012), which combines the techniques of puppetry and Lecoq-derived physical theatre to explore bipolar disorder. Using performance analysis and interviews with the performers, it explores different ways of communicating the experience of mental illness to an audience. Drawing on Emmanuel Levinas's ethical theory, and research on empathy in cognitive science, it will suggest that while the performances partake of very different aesthetic frameworks, both function by manipulating the relationship between subject and object. Neither performance straightforwardly offers 'insight' into the experiences they are based on, but both rather transpose these experiences, creating a space of shared subjectivity. In this way, they bear witness to the complexities of mental illness, constructing their subjects as Others whose minds the audience can perceive empathetically, but not necessarily understand. 'the vacuum cleaner, ' explores questions of power, space and madness in Mental (2013), an autobiographical performance told through official documents including a police file, and The Assessment (2014), among other works. The company BearDog (Joni-Rae Carrack and Calum Anderson) spent 2014 developing a puppet-based piece called Do You Mind? about generalised anxiety disorder. A more historically orientated work, The Idiot Colony
The Scottish Journal of Performance, 2013
This article uses the ideas of 'strategy' and 'tactics' drawn from Michel de Certeau's The Practi... more This article uses the ideas of 'strategy' and 'tactics' drawn from Michel de Certeau's The Practice of Everyday Life in order to examine two specific Scottish performances and determine their conception of mental illness, their approach to performance, and how these performances relate to the structures surrounding them. The first, The Wonderful World of Dissocia, was written by Anthony Neilson, premièred at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2004, and was directly supported by the Scottish Executive's National Programme for Improving Mental Health and Well Being. The second, Does Anyone Know, is a short film resulting from work with prisoners with mental health problems in the High Dependency Unit at HMP Edinburgh by the charity Theatre NEMO, and includes performances by prisoners themselves. Taken together, these performances give some sense of the contingent position of performances of mental illness, the ways in which actors, writers, and service users act within the structures of theatres, prisons, and hospitals, to work around and within the 'strategies' which constitute psychiatric discourse.
Performing Psychologies: Imagination, Creativity and Dramas of the Mind (ed. Nicola Shaughnessy and Philip Barnard) , 2019
This chapter responds to Anna Harpin's invitation to trace the cultural context of psychiatric sp... more This chapter responds to Anna Harpin's invitation to trace the cultural context of psychiatric space through their artistic representation by drawing attention to the particularly gendered articulation of certain cultural understandings of madness. It offers a reading of plays by Sarah Daniels and Sarah Kane, drawing attention to their divergent perspectives on the 'Care in the Community' programme of deinstitutionalization, and attending to the permeable nature of the spaces and concepts which shape our understanding of both gender and madness.
This thesis examines how mental illness has been represented in British theatre from c. 1960 to t... more This thesis examines how mental illness has been represented in British theatre from c. 1960 to the present day. It is particularly concerned with the roles played by space and embodiment in these representations, and what emerges as bodies interact in space. It adopts a mixed methodology, drawing on theoretical models from both continental philosophy and contemporary cognitive and neuroscientific research, in order to address these questions from the broadest possible range of perspectives. The first part of the thesis draws on the work of Michel Foucault and Henri Lefebvre to explore the role of institutional space, and in particular its gendered implications, in staging madness. The second part introduces approaches to the body drawn from the cognitive turn in theatre and performance studies. These are connected to the approaches of the first section through phenomenology’s concern with lived experience. Dan Zahavi and Shaun Gallagher’s work on ‘the phenomenological mind’ provide...
This article discusses two contrasting contemporary performance pieces which explore mental illne... more This article discusses two contrasting contemporary performance pieces which explore mental illness: Laura Jane Dean’s Head Hand Head (2013), a solo autobiographical performance about Dean’s experience of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder; and Theatre Témoin’s The Fantasist (2012), which combines the techniques of puppetry and Lecoq-derived physical theatre to explore bipolar disorder. Using performance analysis and interviews with the performers, it explores different ways of communicating the experience of mental illness to an audience. Drawing on Emmanuel Levinas’s ethical theory, and research on empathy in cognitive science, it will suggest that, while the performances partake of very different aesthetic frameworks, both function by manipulating the relationship between subject and object. Neither performance straightforwardly offers ‘insight’ into the experiences they are based on, but both rather transpose these experiences, creating a space of shared subjectivity. In this way, they bear witness to the complexities of mental illness, constructing their subjects as Others whose minds the audience can perceive empathetically, but not necessarily understand.
MINDFULNESS has been growing in popularity over the past few years, offering a form of meditation... more MINDFULNESS has been growing in popularity over the past few years, offering a form of meditation that can lead to reduced stress, among other benefits. Recent reports have suggested, however, that some people experience negative effects from practising it.
Christian writers regularly mention both the benefits and negative effects of practices similar to mindfulness, and recovering both strands of such Christian traditions is part of what the Church can offer to those interested in a deeper spirituality.
This thesis examines how mental illness has been represented in British theatre from c. 1960 to t... more This thesis examines how mental illness has been represented in British theatre from c. 1960 to the present day. It is particularly concerned with the roles played by space and embodiment in these representations, and what emerges as bodies interact in space. It adopts a mixed methodology, drawing on theoretical models from both continental philosophy and contemporary cognitive and neuroscientific research, in order to address these questions from the broadest possible range of perspectives. The first part of the thesis draws on the work of Michel Foucault and Henri Lefebvre to explore the role of institutional space, and in particular its gendered implications, in staging madness. The second part introduces approaches to the body drawn from the cognitive turn in theatre and performance studies. These are connected to the approaches of the first section through phenomenology’s concern with lived experience. Dan Zahavi and Shaun Gallagher’s work on ‘the phenomenological mind’ provides important context here. In addition, Emmanuel Levinas’s critique of ontology offers a solid basis from which to think about how to act ethically as both a producer of, and an audience member for, representations of mental illness. Through these explorations, this thesis suggests a model of madness, not as something to be bracketed as ‘other’ and belonging to a deviant individual, but as emerging between bodies in space – there is no madness outside of social, spatial and embodied contexts. This in turn suggests a new approach to understanding the role theatre can play in addressing the lived experience of mental illness. While many productions currently attempt, unilaterally, to reduce the ‘stigma’ of mental illness, this thesis suggests that, in fact, discrimination against people experiencing mental illness is more likely to be reduced through the interaction between an ethically minded production and an ethical spectator. Such a model does not claim to be able to reduce the experience of madness to a totalising concept which can be communicated through theatre, but rather insists that it is only through an embodied, empathic interaction that a true concern for the (‘mad’ or ‘sane’) Other can emerge.
Scottish Journal of Performance, Dec 2013
This article uses the ideas of ‘strategy’ and ‘tactics’ drawn
from Michel de Certeau’s The Pract... more This article uses the ideas of ‘strategy’ and ‘tactics’ drawn
from Michel de Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life in
order to examine two specific Scottish performances and
determine their conception of mental illness, their
approach to performance, and how these performances
relate to the structures surrounding them. The first, The
Wonderful World of Dissocia, was written by Anthony
Neilson, premièred at the Edinburgh International Festival
in 2004, and was directly supported by the Scottish
Executive’s National Programme for Improving Mental
Health and Well Being. The second, Does Anyone Know, is a
short film resulting from work with prisoners with mental
health problems in the High Dependency Unit at HMP
Edinburgh by the charity Theatre NEMO, and includes
performances by prisoners themselves. Taken together,
these performances give some sense of the contingent
position of performances of mental illness, the ways in
which actors, writers, and service users act within the
structures of theatres, prisons, and hospitals, to work
around and within the ‘strategies’ which constitute
psychiatric discourse.
Last year, the American Journal of Psychiatry published a worrying report which suggested that at... more Last year, the American Journal of Psychiatry published a worrying report which suggested that attitudes towards mental illness in the US are not improving, despite an increase in campaigns raising awareness. Although that study suggests that anti-stigma campaigns should focus on people rather than diseases, emphasising the capabilities of people with mental illnesses, I would go further and argue that one of the reasons for the failure of these campaigns is the concept of stigma itself, rather than just the way it is used.
Teaching Documents by Chris Dingwall-Jones
Keep these things in mind while writing. If you find yourself doing one of them, stop, back up, a... more Keep these things in mind while writing. If you find yourself doing one of them, stop, back up, and re-focus.
Conference Presentations by Chris Dingwall-Jones
Society for the Study of Theology Annual Conference, 2023
Much has been written on the association between Ritualism (and Anglo-Catholicism more generally)... more Much has been written on the association between Ritualism (and Anglo-Catholicism more generally) and homosexuality. In this paper, I want to follow the lead of Simon Joyce’s founding observation in his LGBT Victorians (2022) that, in that period, ‘gender expression and sexual orientation were intimately linked’ and use this to emphasise elements of what we might call transfeminine gender transgression within the ritualist movement.
The paper will begin by examining anti-ritualist material, particularly appearing in the periodical Punch. In these cartoons and articles, ‘High Church’ or ‘Ritualist’ clergy are often presented as both effeminate and a predatory threat to women. I argue that the obviously homophobic intent of this material is also similar in structure and content to Julia Serano’s description of transmisogyny.
The paper makes no claims to completeness. It aims to re-read ritualist practices by focussing on their gender transgression for two reasons. First to open up imaginative space for considering how individuals might have inhabited this world, and also to seek materials with which to build a counter-theology to those which underlie the so-called ‘anti-gender’ movement prevalent today.
This paper traces the conceptual history of the asylum space on stage, examining three production... more This paper traces the conceptual history of the asylum space on stage, examining three productions of Peter Weiss’s Marat/Sade – Peter Brook’s 1964 RSC production at the Aldwych, Jeremy Sams’s 1997 National Theatre production in the Olivier, and Anthony Neilson’s 2011 RSC revival at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. In doing so, it explores the interaction of performative notions of madness with specific spaces of theatre, and how cultural ideas of the asylum inform theatre practice.
These three productions took place in very different stage-spaces; the Alydwych’s proscenium lay-out, the Olivier’s ‘In-the-Round’ season, and the Royal Shakespeare Theatre’s thrust stage. These differing spaces lend themselves to similarly differing images of ‘the asylum’. Since, as Foucault’s work suggests, the operation of State power is in certain ways echoed by the practice of its asylums, an examination of the relation between theatre-space and asylum-space will inevitably also touch on questions of politics.
Initially, the paper introduces the specific physical representations of asylum space in these productions, spending time drawing attention to the ways in which the ‘inmates’ of the various plays interact with these representations.
The main body of the paper consists of a detailed analysis of the relationship between the represented asylum bath-house and historical conceptions of asylum-spaces. The theatrical effect of Marat/Sade depends on creating a convincing (but not necessarily ‘realistic’) space for the actors, so that the framing device of Charenton can be distinguished from the play taking place therein. The methods by which this distinction is achieved and maintained provide insights into shifting cultural understandings of the asylum. This analysis will be grounded in images of the various stage-spaces and set designs, as well as textual and audiovisual material, which place the stage-asylums in dialogue with the process of de-institutionalisation which occurred over a similar time period to that covered by the productions.
The paper closes with some tentative conclusions about the interactions between medical and dramatic performance of mental illness, the utility of theatre as a site for ‘reading’ attitudes to asylums, and the continuing relevance of the asylum as a dramatic location.
Raymond Williams observed, in Politics of Modernism, that the setting of Naturalist drama ‘was in... more Raymond Williams observed, in Politics of Modernism, that the setting of Naturalist drama ‘was in effect one of the actors: one of the true agencies of the action’. Although not straightforwardly ‘Naturalist’, this insight suggests an approach to the plays of Sarah Daniels, especially those concerned with ‘special hospitals’ for women; the mental institution in these plays can be seen to function as an independent character whether or not it appears as a specific location for dramatic action.
This paper examines the uses Daniels makes of the institution both as protagonist in the dramatic action, and as a ‘stock figure’ which provides a vehicle for political commentary. Initially, the paper provides a brief overview of the questions surrounding women and mental health, especially through the work of Phyllis Chesler and Elaine Showalter. This leads on to an examination of the ways this growing concern with the connections between feminist politics and the politics of mental health create the framework into which Daniels’s plays enter.
The thrust of the paper examines the specific ways in which Daniels uses the medium of theatre to engage with the political questions of representation and identity. One of the most striking elements of Daniels’s dramaturgy is her use of the theatrical form to interrogate and often undermine monolithic conceptions of ‘womanhood’ in favour of a more complex picture of what it means to be a woman in social context of the late 20th century. This tendency to challenge received views both from ‘mainstream culture’ and from feminisms also extends to her engagements with mental illness, especially when it overlaps with female identity.
The paper will focus on one particular way in which this is achieved: through the juxtapositions between cultural perceptions of the asylum, complete with ‘padded cells’, and the reality of late twentieth century mental health care. Daniels privileges neither approach, and questions of sanity, madness and gender are played out in part by the complex character of ‘the asylum’, a character which interacts with, motivates, and threatens the other characters. This dramatic characterisation of the asylum enables Daniels to move away from simplistic notions of psychiatry vs. anti-psychiatry and present a more complex, politically charged idea of the intersection between gender and madness.
In An Actor Prepares, Stanislavsky emphasizes the importance for actors of ‘work’ – of ‘living th... more In An Actor Prepares, Stanislavsky emphasizes the importance for actors of ‘work’ – of ‘living through the part’ and of a constant, firm grip on the affects: “each and every moment must be saturated with a belief in the truthfulness of the emotion felt, and in the action carried out, by the actor”. This kind of affective discipline, for Stanislavsky, is absolutely necessary in order to play ‘truthfully’.
However, building on Mark Seton’s investigations into ‘habitual vulnerability’ in actor training, we can also see that this affective discipline must have an effect on the whole of the actor’s identity, not just on that part of their identity which consists of being an actor. To follow any affective approach to actor training is to engage in a process of affective discipline which overspills the stage and rehearsal room.
This paper will connect the specific form of affective discipline (and hence performance of identity) found in actor training to the kind of affective discipline which forms the basis of the majority of ‘interpersonal therapies’ for mental illness. Drawing on Hardt and Negri’s concept of ‘affective labour’, as well as accounts by actors and mental health service users, I will demonstrate that for both actors and those experiencing mental illness, identity is a form of work, with all the investment of energy and potential for exhaustion which that implies.
Having established this connection, I will touch on some of the ethical issues raised by this intersection between actor training and the treatment of mental illness, as well as the implications of this way of thinking for questions of identity more broadly.
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Papers by Chris Dingwall-Jones
Now the title of a supremely incurious documentary by conservative American commentator Matt Walsh, this question is also a live one in British political discourse. Rather than an invitation to deeper discussion about the nature of gender, it aims to shut down political questions about trans rights by re-framing the discussion as a kind of competition around sex and gender difference.
This competition is focused on the crudely biological, so that more than one journalist has asked Kier Starmer why he ‘struggles with the penis question’ – a demeaning and dehumanising way to talk about the actual trans people affected by policy decisions, but no less predictable for all that.
However, ‘what is a woman’ is also a deeply theological question. I don’t just mean that, taken seriously, it raises all sorts of important theological questions, although it does. Rather, is a question which has been debated by Christian theologians for almost as long as there have been Christian theologians, and their discussions have not necessarily followed the routes you might expect.
Christian writers regularly mention both the benefits and negative effects of practices similar to mindfulness, and recovering both strands of such Christian traditions is part of what the Church can offer to those interested in a deeper spirituality.
from Michel de Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life in
order to examine two specific Scottish performances and
determine their conception of mental illness, their
approach to performance, and how these performances
relate to the structures surrounding them. The first, The
Wonderful World of Dissocia, was written by Anthony
Neilson, premièred at the Edinburgh International Festival
in 2004, and was directly supported by the Scottish
Executive’s National Programme for Improving Mental
Health and Well Being. The second, Does Anyone Know, is a
short film resulting from work with prisoners with mental
health problems in the High Dependency Unit at HMP
Edinburgh by the charity Theatre NEMO, and includes
performances by prisoners themselves. Taken together,
these performances give some sense of the contingent
position of performances of mental illness, the ways in
which actors, writers, and service users act within the
structures of theatres, prisons, and hospitals, to work
around and within the ‘strategies’ which constitute
psychiatric discourse.
Teaching Documents by Chris Dingwall-Jones
Conference Presentations by Chris Dingwall-Jones
The paper will begin by examining anti-ritualist material, particularly appearing in the periodical Punch. In these cartoons and articles, ‘High Church’ or ‘Ritualist’ clergy are often presented as both effeminate and a predatory threat to women. I argue that the obviously homophobic intent of this material is also similar in structure and content to Julia Serano’s description of transmisogyny.
The paper makes no claims to completeness. It aims to re-read ritualist practices by focussing on their gender transgression for two reasons. First to open up imaginative space for considering how individuals might have inhabited this world, and also to seek materials with which to build a counter-theology to those which underlie the so-called ‘anti-gender’ movement prevalent today.
These three productions took place in very different stage-spaces; the Alydwych’s proscenium lay-out, the Olivier’s ‘In-the-Round’ season, and the Royal Shakespeare Theatre’s thrust stage. These differing spaces lend themselves to similarly differing images of ‘the asylum’. Since, as Foucault’s work suggests, the operation of State power is in certain ways echoed by the practice of its asylums, an examination of the relation between theatre-space and asylum-space will inevitably also touch on questions of politics.
Initially, the paper introduces the specific physical representations of asylum space in these productions, spending time drawing attention to the ways in which the ‘inmates’ of the various plays interact with these representations.
The main body of the paper consists of a detailed analysis of the relationship between the represented asylum bath-house and historical conceptions of asylum-spaces. The theatrical effect of Marat/Sade depends on creating a convincing (but not necessarily ‘realistic’) space for the actors, so that the framing device of Charenton can be distinguished from the play taking place therein. The methods by which this distinction is achieved and maintained provide insights into shifting cultural understandings of the asylum. This analysis will be grounded in images of the various stage-spaces and set designs, as well as textual and audiovisual material, which place the stage-asylums in dialogue with the process of de-institutionalisation which occurred over a similar time period to that covered by the productions.
The paper closes with some tentative conclusions about the interactions between medical and dramatic performance of mental illness, the utility of theatre as a site for ‘reading’ attitudes to asylums, and the continuing relevance of the asylum as a dramatic location.
This paper examines the uses Daniels makes of the institution both as protagonist in the dramatic action, and as a ‘stock figure’ which provides a vehicle for political commentary. Initially, the paper provides a brief overview of the questions surrounding women and mental health, especially through the work of Phyllis Chesler and Elaine Showalter. This leads on to an examination of the ways this growing concern with the connections between feminist politics and the politics of mental health create the framework into which Daniels’s plays enter.
The thrust of the paper examines the specific ways in which Daniels uses the medium of theatre to engage with the political questions of representation and identity. One of the most striking elements of Daniels’s dramaturgy is her use of the theatrical form to interrogate and often undermine monolithic conceptions of ‘womanhood’ in favour of a more complex picture of what it means to be a woman in social context of the late 20th century. This tendency to challenge received views both from ‘mainstream culture’ and from feminisms also extends to her engagements with mental illness, especially when it overlaps with female identity.
The paper will focus on one particular way in which this is achieved: through the juxtapositions between cultural perceptions of the asylum, complete with ‘padded cells’, and the reality of late twentieth century mental health care. Daniels privileges neither approach, and questions of sanity, madness and gender are played out in part by the complex character of ‘the asylum’, a character which interacts with, motivates, and threatens the other characters. This dramatic characterisation of the asylum enables Daniels to move away from simplistic notions of psychiatry vs. anti-psychiatry and present a more complex, politically charged idea of the intersection between gender and madness.
However, building on Mark Seton’s investigations into ‘habitual vulnerability’ in actor training, we can also see that this affective discipline must have an effect on the whole of the actor’s identity, not just on that part of their identity which consists of being an actor. To follow any affective approach to actor training is to engage in a process of affective discipline which overspills the stage and rehearsal room.
This paper will connect the specific form of affective discipline (and hence performance of identity) found in actor training to the kind of affective discipline which forms the basis of the majority of ‘interpersonal therapies’ for mental illness. Drawing on Hardt and Negri’s concept of ‘affective labour’, as well as accounts by actors and mental health service users, I will demonstrate that for both actors and those experiencing mental illness, identity is a form of work, with all the investment of energy and potential for exhaustion which that implies.
Having established this connection, I will touch on some of the ethical issues raised by this intersection between actor training and the treatment of mental illness, as well as the implications of this way of thinking for questions of identity more broadly.
Now the title of a supremely incurious documentary by conservative American commentator Matt Walsh, this question is also a live one in British political discourse. Rather than an invitation to deeper discussion about the nature of gender, it aims to shut down political questions about trans rights by re-framing the discussion as a kind of competition around sex and gender difference.
This competition is focused on the crudely biological, so that more than one journalist has asked Kier Starmer why he ‘struggles with the penis question’ – a demeaning and dehumanising way to talk about the actual trans people affected by policy decisions, but no less predictable for all that.
However, ‘what is a woman’ is also a deeply theological question. I don’t just mean that, taken seriously, it raises all sorts of important theological questions, although it does. Rather, is a question which has been debated by Christian theologians for almost as long as there have been Christian theologians, and their discussions have not necessarily followed the routes you might expect.
Christian writers regularly mention both the benefits and negative effects of practices similar to mindfulness, and recovering both strands of such Christian traditions is part of what the Church can offer to those interested in a deeper spirituality.
from Michel de Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life in
order to examine two specific Scottish performances and
determine their conception of mental illness, their
approach to performance, and how these performances
relate to the structures surrounding them. The first, The
Wonderful World of Dissocia, was written by Anthony
Neilson, premièred at the Edinburgh International Festival
in 2004, and was directly supported by the Scottish
Executive’s National Programme for Improving Mental
Health and Well Being. The second, Does Anyone Know, is a
short film resulting from work with prisoners with mental
health problems in the High Dependency Unit at HMP
Edinburgh by the charity Theatre NEMO, and includes
performances by prisoners themselves. Taken together,
these performances give some sense of the contingent
position of performances of mental illness, the ways in
which actors, writers, and service users act within the
structures of theatres, prisons, and hospitals, to work
around and within the ‘strategies’ which constitute
psychiatric discourse.
The paper will begin by examining anti-ritualist material, particularly appearing in the periodical Punch. In these cartoons and articles, ‘High Church’ or ‘Ritualist’ clergy are often presented as both effeminate and a predatory threat to women. I argue that the obviously homophobic intent of this material is also similar in structure and content to Julia Serano’s description of transmisogyny.
The paper makes no claims to completeness. It aims to re-read ritualist practices by focussing on their gender transgression for two reasons. First to open up imaginative space for considering how individuals might have inhabited this world, and also to seek materials with which to build a counter-theology to those which underlie the so-called ‘anti-gender’ movement prevalent today.
These three productions took place in very different stage-spaces; the Alydwych’s proscenium lay-out, the Olivier’s ‘In-the-Round’ season, and the Royal Shakespeare Theatre’s thrust stage. These differing spaces lend themselves to similarly differing images of ‘the asylum’. Since, as Foucault’s work suggests, the operation of State power is in certain ways echoed by the practice of its asylums, an examination of the relation between theatre-space and asylum-space will inevitably also touch on questions of politics.
Initially, the paper introduces the specific physical representations of asylum space in these productions, spending time drawing attention to the ways in which the ‘inmates’ of the various plays interact with these representations.
The main body of the paper consists of a detailed analysis of the relationship between the represented asylum bath-house and historical conceptions of asylum-spaces. The theatrical effect of Marat/Sade depends on creating a convincing (but not necessarily ‘realistic’) space for the actors, so that the framing device of Charenton can be distinguished from the play taking place therein. The methods by which this distinction is achieved and maintained provide insights into shifting cultural understandings of the asylum. This analysis will be grounded in images of the various stage-spaces and set designs, as well as textual and audiovisual material, which place the stage-asylums in dialogue with the process of de-institutionalisation which occurred over a similar time period to that covered by the productions.
The paper closes with some tentative conclusions about the interactions between medical and dramatic performance of mental illness, the utility of theatre as a site for ‘reading’ attitudes to asylums, and the continuing relevance of the asylum as a dramatic location.
This paper examines the uses Daniels makes of the institution both as protagonist in the dramatic action, and as a ‘stock figure’ which provides a vehicle for political commentary. Initially, the paper provides a brief overview of the questions surrounding women and mental health, especially through the work of Phyllis Chesler and Elaine Showalter. This leads on to an examination of the ways this growing concern with the connections between feminist politics and the politics of mental health create the framework into which Daniels’s plays enter.
The thrust of the paper examines the specific ways in which Daniels uses the medium of theatre to engage with the political questions of representation and identity. One of the most striking elements of Daniels’s dramaturgy is her use of the theatrical form to interrogate and often undermine monolithic conceptions of ‘womanhood’ in favour of a more complex picture of what it means to be a woman in social context of the late 20th century. This tendency to challenge received views both from ‘mainstream culture’ and from feminisms also extends to her engagements with mental illness, especially when it overlaps with female identity.
The paper will focus on one particular way in which this is achieved: through the juxtapositions between cultural perceptions of the asylum, complete with ‘padded cells’, and the reality of late twentieth century mental health care. Daniels privileges neither approach, and questions of sanity, madness and gender are played out in part by the complex character of ‘the asylum’, a character which interacts with, motivates, and threatens the other characters. This dramatic characterisation of the asylum enables Daniels to move away from simplistic notions of psychiatry vs. anti-psychiatry and present a more complex, politically charged idea of the intersection between gender and madness.
However, building on Mark Seton’s investigations into ‘habitual vulnerability’ in actor training, we can also see that this affective discipline must have an effect on the whole of the actor’s identity, not just on that part of their identity which consists of being an actor. To follow any affective approach to actor training is to engage in a process of affective discipline which overspills the stage and rehearsal room.
This paper will connect the specific form of affective discipline (and hence performance of identity) found in actor training to the kind of affective discipline which forms the basis of the majority of ‘interpersonal therapies’ for mental illness. Drawing on Hardt and Negri’s concept of ‘affective labour’, as well as accounts by actors and mental health service users, I will demonstrate that for both actors and those experiencing mental illness, identity is a form of work, with all the investment of energy and potential for exhaustion which that implies.
Having established this connection, I will touch on some of the ethical issues raised by this intersection between actor training and the treatment of mental illness, as well as the implications of this way of thinking for questions of identity more broadly.
This paper will examine the history and ideological function of these embodied practices, exploring how the development of this daily prayer (the ‘Divine Office’) worked historically to inculcate a sense of a shared history (particularly in the commemoration of martyrs and certain feasts).
By reflecting on my own experience of life in such a religious community, the paper will also suggest that, while this ‘top down’ model offered a means of institutional control, the diversity of approaches to daily prayer which now exist, as well as the local diversity which has always existed, provide a more complex picture.
Within this more complex approach, the embodied practices of daily prayer allow individuals and groups both to assert their identity as part of a community extended in time, and to claim their own individual expression of that community. Liturgies of time are thus sites at which both conformity and resistance, continuity and rupture are, paradoxically, performed simultaneously.
This paper attempts to reframe the question of what it means to participate in liturgy by drawing on insights from Performance Studies.
First, it will introduce discussions of participation found in Performance Studies, aiming to disrupt the simple binaries (embodied/disembodied, engaged/disengaged, accessible/inaccessible) which can prematurely constrain such investigations.
Next, it will ask how these insights might alter our theological reflections on what it means to participate in the liturgy, and what difference these alterations might make.
Finally, it will propose that by radically assuming liturgical participation (rather than attempting to determine who is participating ‘properly’) we can begin to imagine a Church which recognises the varied ways in which members of Christ’s body participate in worship.
It then draws on work by Matthew L. Pierce to think about why certain forms of liturgy might 'feel like a performance,' suggesting that this has as much to do with familiarity as with any inherent quality to any particular act of worship.
After this, it begins to look at liturgy from the perspective of performance studies, acknowledging that the liturgy has always developed in conjunction with the advent of new technologies. It draws on Philip Auslander's discussion of 'liveness' and how liveness is not an ontological concept but dependent on contemporary technologies of reproduction. Liveness promises to remove the distance between performer and spectator but can never do so.
The final section of the paper considers the question of 'presence' in relation to the digital, the embodied, and the eucharistic. It concludes in a slightly polemical mode, that the Eucharist is /not/ live, in Auslander's sense, because in the reception of the eucharist achieves the removal of distance which liveness promises but can never achieve.